Prolific and diverse, Paul is a director we’ve always dreamed of having on our team. His love of animation goes back to his days as a boy in Czechoslovakia, when he created his first film by shooting drawings from his flipbook with a 16mm Bolex. That childhood fascination turned into a career when, a few years after graduating from the Bechyne School of Applied Arts, Paul became the first independent producer of animated films in his country.

Since arriving in the United States in 1968, he has worked constantly, initially directing the documentary Prague, The Summer of Tanks for Universal Pictures and soon founding his own animation house, AR&T. Over the past 35 years, AR&Thas produced over 700 films, of which several hundred are television commercials. He has won over a hundred separate distinctions for his work, ranging from the CINE Golden Eagle to Best in Category Awards at festivals in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Annecy, Ottawa, Zagreb, Milan, Melbourne, Prague and London. In 1980, his film It’s So Nice to Have a Wolf Around the House received an Academy Award nomination and in 1997, he received a PEW Fellowship in the Arts award for his body of work. His beloved character Teeny Little Super Guy is on his fourth decade on Sesame Street.

Many of Paul’s most celebrated films focus on the art of personal storytelling. Drawn from Memory, an autobiographical piece that was commissioned by ITVS/PBS, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 1995 and has since been televised nationally and throughout the world. Another PBS special, Still Life with Animated Dogs, won the prestigious Peabody Award in 2002.

Working with his wife Sandra, he created the Drawn from Life for the Oxygen Channel. This series, featuring the voices and simple stories of real life women, won the Grand Prix of 2000 at the International Festival of Animation in Ottawa, Canada. Their latest ITVS/PBS special, A Room Nearby, which premiered at the Margaret Meade Festival in New York City, is a stunning illustration of how five very different people, from Harlem-born writer Lynn Blue to Hollywood film director Milos Forman, deal with bouts of loneliness.

Paul currently lives and works out of the Wynnewood, Pennsylvania home and studio he shares with Sandra. We think of him whenever we’ve got a good story.

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